


Wine and Misconceptions

by elvenwanderer



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ardor in August, M/M, challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1991625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvenwanderer/pseuds/elvenwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thranduil grows alarmed by Gil-galad's apparent impending marriage and is informed otherwise. Written for Ardor in August 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wine and Misconceptions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/gifts).



> Written from my prompt for Ardor in August 2014. I hope you enjoy it! (elvenwanderer06 author)

Oropher’s son spent the first half of the evening either hunched completely forward or slumped backwards in his seat. He was bored out of his mind, so much so he played with the tableware. He had not moved from this spot more than to relieve himself since before noon this day, and it was nearly sunset. Throughout that time, he always had one hand on a wine goblet with his thumb pushing the ring on his second finger around in circles. People came to speak to him periodically, but he made it clear he was in no mood to be celebrating the longest day of the year this time around. He always preferred starlight anyway. Eventually, he was the only one left at the table and no one approached.

Now it was sunset: the young ones had been sent to bed and the dancing – the real heart of the festivities – was set to begin. The only change in his situation was though his one hand remained on his wine glass, the other was gripped tightly. Just what it was his hand was clutching varied proportionally with just how close the High-King of the Noldor was dancing with that red-haired Fëanorian advisor of his. Or him dancing with anyone else. But mostly her. Thranduil was simply watching his friend move. 

It was becoming a habit with him, he realized. Him just watching Gil-galad… or really just the ellon’s hips, well, really just the front of his hips, with a very surprising and personal type of reaction. He had not the heart to say anything, as he did not want to harm their relationship. Gil-galad had been his friend and increasingly close confidant for the last few years, since shortly after their peoples had fled from Beleriand and into this land. Only recently however, Thranduil had begun to see his dark-haired friend as something else. Something considerably more intimate. Thranduil knew this was a one-sided change in their relationship and that made him, normally a quiet ellon, even more introverted and moody. 

He did not know what to make of this… this strong and persistent attraction to his friend. It was something that he had been having a horrible time trying (and failing) to overcome. Only more so as he watched the King’s relationship with that elleth blossom into what was likely going to be marriage and children. Never before had Thranduil ever been prone to jealousy, and he would never admit to the emotion when it came to envy of a Kinslaying Noldorin elleth. So he kept himself away from the King, avoiding the ellon whom he normally sought out. He knew it was unhealthy for him to act this way. It was turning into a cycle of hide-and-deny that only ended with Thranduil becoming grumpy and surly before drowning his coherent mind in wine. 

At the first chords announcing the next song, the elleth reached upwards and whispered into the King’s ear, her body hovering too close to his to be considered at all proper… Thranduil cringed. As the elleth came down off of her toes, Gil-galad appeared surprised before looking out into the trees with an undecipherable expression. Moments later, he pulled the elleth into a deep kiss and drew her into the developing crowd of dancers. Perplexed, Thranduil continued to watch the (admittedly well-matched) couple grapple with one another through to the end of what was a long and very sultry song. He himself grew only more bothered and turned-on the entire time they danced. 

Time and time again, he saw the King and the elleth draw close, their hips grinding against one another, their hands splayed and clutching whatever they could grasp of the other. Thranduil thought it odd, but he felt as if the elleth was looking to him, though her eyes rarely pointed his direction. Gil-galad never looked, but, in a manner known only to those of the Eldar who wished to study it, Thranduil knew the King was aware he was watching them. 

Thranduil knew Gil-galad was showing off. The King was making a display to the world, and Thranduil was the intended target. Gil-galad wanted Thranduil to feel jealous. 

Valar, it was working.

With a hiss, Thranduil saw the king draw the elleth’s body absurdly close as the last few notes played. Aroused and excited looks plastered over both their faces as they stared at one another and panted to catch their breath. In his seat, Thranduil spun the ring faster on his finger and gulped at the rest of his almost-full glass of wine, wishing for a reprieve from the carnal show he had just witnessed. He was already reaching for the nearest wine decanter with his other hand when he glimpsed the telltale, and rather sizable, bulge in the front of the king’s pants as the elleth peeled herself off of him… very slowly.  
Without thought, Thrandil downed another goblet-full, and was pouring the next when his father’s body dropped into the chair next to him and grabbed the glass from Thranduil before he even finished pouring it. Oropher drained it with a flick of his wrist and a proud grin even as some of the liquid dribbled down his chin. The older ellon’s eyes were half-lidded and he was leaning heavily sideways in his chair. In a manner so totally unrecognizable from his normally very serious mien, he slapped his son on the arm and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I don’t think he’d mind, you know.”

Thranduil coughed in surprise, his hand twitching and pouring more wine all over the table. He wiped it away with some disgust at the wasted liquid. “What, Father?”

“I see you staring at Miralaith, both today and all the other times you’re around her.” Oropher laughed. “I watched her dance just now. If not for your mother… well… Miralaith may be a little misguided in believing Gil-galad is right for her, but that is nothing that a little, ah, private instruction from you wouldn’t fix,” he grinned stupidly, gesturing to his hips with a nod as he made a very suggestive and pointed swaying motion. Oropher laughed again and tottered over in his seat, clearly very drunk. “I’m sure Gil won’t mind if you ask her to, ha, dance with you. By the stars, having you as competition may just help him finally propose to her.”

“Propose?!” Thranduil sat forward and stared at the spot where he had last seen the High-King and the elleth in question. They were nowhere to be found, and her red hair was not easy to hide even in the growing dark. Thranduil panicked. Gil-galad was going to propose marriage to her… what if it was tonight? Thranduil began hyperventilating and he had no idea why. Why was he so worried whether or not the High-King had proposed the elleth? Their business was most definitely none of his.

Oropher laughed at the look of shock on his son’s face. Oropher laughed hard.

As the only response he could make, Thranduil stood, his legs a little shaky from nerves, potent arousal and the recent influx of three full glasses of wine in addition to what he had drank during the day. Not even bothering with bringing a glass, he poured the rest of the closest bottle into his mouth and tossed it to the side. He stalked off, grabbing another two decanters off of the table as he went. He flipped the cap off of the neck of one and swigged a mouthful as he moved. He leaned against a table for a moment as he reached the edge of the clearing and took a few deep breaths. He looked downwards, realizing why his gait was made more awkward: his cock, now freed someone of the constriction from being seated, was nearly at full-tilt, displaying an attraction his rational mind wanted to deny. He kept walking through the forest, mostly heedless of those around him, past at least one shaking and moaning bush. For this night that seemed fairly normal. There had always been that one festival a year in Doriath where things went more than a little crazy. How could he have expected otherwise when their people had been denied any emotional outlets like this for nearly two decades now? He was in no mind to deny others their release, though he was sorely tempted to at least toss his wine at them.

Moving on, Thranduil swigged the drink again and sank down against a fairly secluded tree, wiping the drips from his face with his sleeve as he leaned his arm on his knee. His mind was foggy, pleasantly so and just enough to help him not realize how heart-broken he was. He laughed bitterly. Marriage? The King was getting married?

“What’s so amusing, my Lord Thranduil?”

The ellon looked up, seeing his beloved Gil-galad’s face blocking the moon in such a way that he was given a silver halo. Thranduil was enraptured and just drunk enough to be convinced his friend wasn’t real.

“You. Getting married,” he slurred at the likeness of the King. He hiccupped. “To anyone but me.” The words were out before he realized he had said them, and he really didn’t care. He laughed and waved a hand. The Gil-galad in front of him was simply an apparition, a figment of his mind, and the real thing would never hear these words. If he wanted to get better, he had to learn to be honest, if only to himself.

A thin eyebrow rose and a smile cracked on the King’s well-formed lips. “You think I’m getting married?”  
Thranduil waved wildly off in the distance. “My father just said as much. I’ve seen you: you dance with that elleth in more ways than one, I hear.”

There was a rich laugh. “You’ve seen and heard?” The false Gil-galad moved out from in front of the moon to sit next to Thranduil, taking the wine from his compliant hand before sniffing it. Shrugging, he took a draught and set the decanter down between them. “If you have heard and seen so much, you should have asked to join in. Neither of us would have minded in the least. I knew you watched us, but I never thought it was because you wanted me and not Mira.”

Thranduil’s dislike of the elleth showed on his face. “Her red hair and her nose are pretty – for a Noldorin elleth – but she is rude, commanding and haughty,” Thranduil unleashed. “She is nothing like you.”

That velvet laugh again. Thranduil would have bristled had he not been so drunk and had he not adored the sound of it. “No wonder you dislike her: her manner is everything like yours,” the figment laughed again and swiped the decanter away from Thranduil’s blindly roving hand to drink from it again himself. Thranduil felt his heart race, his mind beginning to wonder why and how an imagined being could drink his wine. Then he figured he had just drank it quickly enough already that the bottle was already past halfway and his flailing arm had knocked it away, and that explained everything. The figment leaned towards him, and he felt himself get caught in the other’s gaze, his mind back in the moment. “Did you like what you saw and heard?” Gil-galad’s voice had gone grainy and deeper than usual, filled with emotion.

Thranduil grinned and wobbled sideways towards him when he tried to lean in. He splayed his hands around to correct himself. Falling flat on his face and getting smudged with dirt was not a proper way to present himself… even to the mental semblance of his best friend. He smiled again, his tone matching the amount of brazenness he heard from the other. Flirting became Gil-galad’s features wonderfully. “Well, I did not see nearly as much as what I would like. And I have only heard rumors,” he defended out of habit. “Nothing good.”

The other considered this a moment. “As in you heard all bad things or no good noises?”

Thranduil laughed. “You seem to know how to lift my sour moods, Gil-galad.”

The figment leaned closer again, his hot breath hitting Thranduil’s ear as he whispered: “I think that is not all I am good at lifting, my dear.” At the sheer want and lust in the King’s imagined voice, Thranduil felt a surge of desire shoot straight to where it would be most effectively felt by him and seen by others, had anyone else been around. 

Thranduil reached around for the decanter again, knowing these moments of candidly speaking to Gil-galad would soon come to an end if he did not keep drinking. When he tried, he could become this drunk quite quickly, but it took persistent upkeep to maintain it, otherwise he would sober up just as fast. And sweet Eru, he wanted to stay that drunk forever if he could keep his mental projection of Gil-galad speaking like this.

“No no,” the other whispered before downing the rest of the contents of the bottle with a grimace and tossing it off into the trees. “I want you sober for this.”

Thranduil’s eyes widened at his mind’s not-so-subtle implication and his hand went directly to rub his cock, which was straining to be free from the fabric of his pants. 

His hand was removed from that area and placed on his leg instead. “And that,” Gil-galad whispered in his ear, his breath even warmer than a few moments before, “you are not to touch. It is my province for the evening.”

Thranduil’s mind, though now clearing from the drink, was clouding with something so much better, wondered how this would work. If Gil-galad was only a figment, well, he needed more than a figment to find his release. But if Gil-galad was only in his imagination, there would have been no hot breath on his ear. It certainly would not have happened twice now.

“Why did you think I was marrying Mira?”

“You dance with her.” Thranduil offered, distracted as his mind waded through the whole situation. 

“I would dance with you as well,” Gil-galad said without hesitation, a grin shining on his features that were so like his father’s. He noted the confused expression on Thranduil’s face. “Fear not: neither of us wishes to further the relationship past what it is.”  
Thranduil scoffed. “And what is that?”

“Two consenting adults who wish for physical intimacy and release without the strings and emotional attachment of marriage. I find her beautiful and a pleasant companion, and as far as I can tell, she finds me a similar. But that is the end of it. Her heart lies with one she left in Aman. Mine lies… hmmm… elsewhere.” 

Thranduil felt a brush against the ring made of shining black gold he had received from Gil-galad for his accepting a position on the King’s Privy Council. As a nervous reflex the blond ellon squeezed his hand against his thigh but did not feel the expected pressure appear where it should have. “The… the rumors of your engagement?”

Gil-galad waved this away. “Pure fiction on the part of those who wish me to produce an heir. Your father included.”

Thranduil felt his shoulders slump in relief. “I am glad of that.”

Now he felt the expected pressure grow on his thigh, though he had not moved his hand again. The pressure abated, moved up higher and increased again. He knew he was no longer drunk enough to not notice his hand was not on his own leg. Someone else’s was, and he was touching… him. 

“Everything is explained now, from your distancing yourself, to your increased drinking. Tell me Thranduil, you who discerns so much, how could you not tell just now I was trying to bait you? To make you feel jealous? You were worried for nothing: Mira was in on that display just now. In fact, she is the one who alerted me to your scrutiny. She knew it was not for herself.”

Breaking the contact, Thranduil sat forward and closed his eyes, tenting one hand over his face. After a few moments he turned, his mind far more clear than it had been a few minutes before. His head normally cursed his body’s ability to sober so quickly, but now he rejoiced in it. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

A soft smile answered him, confirming his fears and hopes at once. “Yes, my dear, it is.”

“You are really sitting next to me beneath a tree at Midsummer?”

“I am really sitting next to you beneath a tree at Midsummer.” – a small smirk, no more than a twitch of his upper lip – “Are you saying you would prefer I be someplace else?”

Thranduil ignored his question, knowing it was not serious. “And you are truly telling me you are… not marrying that elleth?”

“Neither of us would ever dream of it,” he confirmed.

Thranduil felt his smile grow to match Gil-galad’s. “You are really here.”

“Yes?” A pause with a questioning glance at the area where the wine flask went. “Just how much wine did you have?”

“Recently?” Thranduil considered. “Six glasses. It would have been seven had my father not drank one… eight, maybe nine if you had not.”

Gil-galad grinned. “Had I not, it would have been longer before I could do this and have you remember every heart-pounding detail. A sacrifice I would  
gladly make, even if you were drinking the worst table wine I own.”

“It was the closest full bottle,” Thranduil defended with a frown. “I was not being very discriminating at the time. I was too – wait, so that I could remember every heart-pounding detail of what?”

“Oh, many things… like, for example: this.” Gil-galad leaned forward and pulled Thranduil in for a passionate kiss, leaving the blond ellon’s mind and body reeling when they drew away a while later. “But I intend to do so, so much more.”


End file.
